Terror trial suspect admits bomb-making

Last updated at 14:42 24 July 2006

One of the men accused of involvement in a British terror cell linked to al-Qa'ida admitted in his first police interview that he had once helped make and detonate a fertiliser bomb, the Old Bailey heard today.

Salahuddin Amin, 31, told anti-terror detectives how he spent two days learning how to make explosives while at a house in Kohat, Pakistan, in 2003.

In the interview at Paddington Green police station, played to an Old Bailey jury today, Amin claimed one of his co-accused, Omar Khyam, also took part in the training session.

He told police how they had received instruction on how to make an ammonium nitrate fertiliser bomb and went on to claim that they had detonated "fertiliser explosive" in a nearby river.

In the first hour of the interview, Amin also said he had learned how to make the poison ricin and that he manufactured, but never used it, the court heard.

He told police he had once visited a Jihadi training camp in Pakistan, on another occasion fired a Kalashnikov, fallen in with extremists in the UK and had got "mixed up with terrorists", the jury heard.

However, he told detectives he did not consider himself to be a terrorist.

The interview, which was videotaped, took place eight hours after Amin had been arrested on a British Airways flight from Islamabad as it arrived at Heathrow Airport on February 8 last year.

Khyam, 24, his brother Shujah Mahmood, 19, Waheed Mahmood, 34, and Akbar, 22, all from Crawley, West Sussex, Amin, from Luton, Beds, Anthony Garcia, 23, of Ilford, east London, and Nabeel Hussain, 21, of Horley, Surrey, deny conspiring to cause explosions likely to endanger life between January 1, 2003 and March 31, 2004.

Khyam, Garcia and Hussain also deny a charge under the Terrorism Act of possessing 600kg (1,300lb) of ammonium nitrate fertiliser for terrorism.